I'm not sure this is a useful summary of the problem. I've seen an awful lot of code written in C and C++ that pisses away any and all advantage of using eithe

I'm not sure this is a useful summary of the problem. I've seen an awful lot of code written in C and C++ that pisses away any and all advantage of using either. In general, I think software devs (and the software market) tend to value convenience over performance until it's too late, but the reasons why are so complicated and different per sector they'd make for a full PhD thesis and then some.